Beijing [China], March 7,2023: China defended its growing defence budget and said that the military spending is purely to safeguard the country’s sovereignty, security and interests, The Global Times reported.
Tan Kefei, a spokesperson of the People’s Liberation Army and People’s Armed Police delegation to the first session of the 14th National People’s Congress made these remarks on Monday at two ongoing sessions, after the country announced its plan to raise the defence budget by 7.2 per cent in 2023.
“The Chinese government adheres to the policy of coordinated development of national defence development and economic development, and it reasonably sets the scale of defence expenditure based on the needs of national defence and the development level of the national economy,” Tan said.
Foreign media should look at their own countries’ military expansions before hyping the “China threat” theory, analysts said.
The eight-day annual session of China‘s National People’s Congress opened on March 4 in the presence of around 3000 delegates and President Xi Jinping and other leaders. The session assumed importance in the backdrop of new geo-political threats facing China and its lowest growth in decades at 3 per cent in the year 2022.
Outgoing Premier of China Li Keqiang, while addressing the opening of the annual session and presenting the government’s annual work report (AWR), revealed that the growth target for China for the year 2023 would be “around 5 per cent”. The AWR also highlighted that over 12 million jobs were added in 2022 while the urban unemployment rate fell to 5.5 per cent. He suggested that the Chinese government “should give priority to the recovery and expansion of consumption”. Li will finish his decade as the country’s premier, who was in charge of the economy, at the end of the eight-day National People’s Congress (NPC).
